Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Is This Happening to You To?

Since the end of the 2016 election, and especially since it resulted in the victory of Donald J. Trump as president, Facebook has become utterly intolerable. I took the application off my phone when I realized, a few days after the election, that I felt angry every time I scrolled through my newsfeed . . .
One of my many friends also feeling this way, Sarah Barak, wrote on Facebook recently: “I feel hectored. I’ll be happier if I unfollow the worst offenders. It’s just too much and the constant negative coverage is affecting my happiness.” . . .
The problem with Facebook political rants is this: It is not Twitter. I do not “follow” my high school best friends because of their insightful political commentary; I want to see updates on their lives and pictures of their adorable children. . . .
If all you’re using Facebook for is to yell into the digital void about politics, you will find your audience for such rants is getting smaller by the minute. Sorry, random friends from all walks of life: I just don’t care what you think about Donald Trump today.
I hoped the tone would improve post-election, but with the inauguration and every statement or story out of the Trump administration, the hysteria remains at a fevered pitch. And I’m sick of it.

The problem is #TheResistance, as anti-Trump radicals have dubbed themselves on social media. Having bought into the liberal media propaganda that Trump is Hitler and GOP voters are Nazis, the Left has incited Democrat voters to insult anyone who didn’t vote for Clinton. This deliberate dehumanization of Republican voters, as willing accomplices of a latter-day Holocaust, has the effect of making Democrat voters insanely hostile toward anyone who disagrees with them. Therefore, GOP voters are apt to be silent when confronted with a Facebook friend’s anti-Trump rant, because if you say anything in favor of Trump, you’ll be inundated with angry messages from your deranged Democrat friend, and then all their anti-Trump friends will join in the hate-swarm.

Yeah, my Facebook feed has been pretty bad lately, worse than usual. I personally try to keep my Facebook free of politics, although I confess to slipping a few times lately with some snarky responses. My friends list is bipolar, consisting a fishermen and scientists (and a few family). The fishermen are largely, but not exclusively republican, and the scientist are almost all democratic stalwarts.

A couple of my friends have threatene ed to "unfollow" people who post poltical BS, and I'm almost there. If I could figure out how.